Elon and Bill: Puppets Working for the Same Master?

NASA, DOD, DOE and Los Alamos National Laboratory have shined thanks to America’s Golden Boy and Grey Goose.  A win-win for all?

To imagine how it may have gone down, Space Force said to the DOE, “You get your electric bunny, we get our space rocket.” Military high-fived Nuclear Power start-ups saying, “You get your energy source, we get our nuclear weapons.”

April 2022 appears to have been a lucky month for Elon and his Twitter bid. But he’s had other takeovers. Recall Tesla Motors? Elon reportedly got about half a billion in loans from the DOE. 

But don’t overlook his private company, SpaceX and its Starlink.

How much did it set Elon financially back? Not much it seems. “The Federal Communications Commission awarded Elon Musk’s SpaceX with nearly $900 million worth of federal subsidies to support rural broadband customers through the company’s Starlink satellite internet network…” assessed in raking in billions a year.

Run by SpaceX, Starlink’s thousands of satellites can provide internet service. Partnering with Microsoft, will it provide “secure communication” linking two networks – cloud computing and satellite? Government surveillance of the crowd?

Next G-men, it appears, will be Faces in the Crowd and Cloud wearing their own version of indistinguishable masks and boiler hats.  How? Discover America’s new “crystal ball” in the “Power of the Puppet Master: SurVeillance in the Cloud”

Seems like only yesterday when Elon unsuccessfully attempted to purchase refurbished Dnepr rockets from Russia. He went back in February 2002. Only this time he took then NASAs Administrator Michael Griffin as chaperone to get them. But the Ruskies didn’t bite. No, No Ruski toys for America’s “Golden Boy.”

Yet, it appears Elon’s fated April 20, 2005 meeting in Washington with Griffin, now the Under Secretary of Defense Research and Engineering, is what finally got the “crystal ball” rolling.

What’s Good for the Goose is not always Good for the Gander

Unlike the “goose that lays the golden eggs,” Microsoft’s Bill Gates has apparently needed to scramble his egghead projects these past two decades. From software to biotech to cloud computing to nuclear reactors.  

Reuters reports that Bill Gates “had initially hoped to build an experimental nuclear plant near Beijing with state-owned China National Nuclear Corp.” After four years, US quit the agreement in 2019. Keeping its eye on the North Pacific, TerraPower partnered up with Japan’s GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy.

Why? Says CEO of TerraPower, “This was necessary because the U.S. government and the U.S. nuclear industry was falling behind.” Now that we know why, how much is it going to cost the American Taxpayer?

“The project will get about $1.9 billion from the federal government including $1.5 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure bill that President Joe Biden signed this week. The bill included about $2.5 billion for advanced nuclear reactors.” Yep, all hands on deck when it comes to guns and nuclear weapons.

Gates, why Japan? Did the Biden administration restrict technology transfers with Russia as Trump did with China in 2019? Recall the originally named Colliding Beam Fusion Reactor, CBFR, Tri Alpha Energy or TAE Technologies in Foothill Ranch, California?

US public/private ventures are ideal for technology transfers. The late UC Irvine professor Norman Rostoker, known as “the father of breakthrough clean nuclear fusion energy” co-founded Tri Alpha Energy along with Microsoft co-founder, the late Paul Allen.

Bill, seems like only yesterday when “Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Russia Join Forces on Nuclear Fusion.” Investors included Rusnano. “The Rusnano Group, a venture firm created by the government of Russia, is the latest investor to jump into Tri-Alpha Energy, one of the most potentially groundbreaking and mysterious companies in tech.” Why the mystery?

Unlike California, “TerraPower’s Natrium plant will be built in Kemmerer, a remote western Wyoming town where the Naughton coal plant is due to shut in 2025.” Nice transition, from fossil to fusion.

Goose and Gander, did you find it takes more than money and luck to walk through Wall Street and make it to the other side still a winner?

Bill, why the continued promotion of your book on the Pandemic, specifically biotech? Why not nuclear reactors? Misdirect the public? What ya hiding?

Elon, how long before you’re goosed and another gander is chaperoned? 

In time you both may discover things have a way of ‘coming full circle’, on earth as in space 🙂